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enterprise THE DAVIS
FRIDAY, JULY 24, 2020
UCD researcher charged with visa fraud for hiding ties to Chinese military BY CALEB HAMPTON Enterprise staff writer Juan Tang, a Chinese national and visiting cancer researcher at UC Davis, was charged in federal court last month with visa fraud for lying about her affiliation with the Chinese military. Tang,
who is wanted by the FBI, is believed to have sought refuge inside the Chinese consulate in San Francisco. According to a federal criminal complaint filed June 26 in the Eastern District of California, Tang applied for a non-immigrant visa on Oct. 28 and was issued a J-1 visa
on Nov. 5 to conduct research at UC Davis. Tang entered the United States on Dec. 27, the complaint states. On her visa application, Tang answered no to the question, “Have you served in the military?” She also said she was not affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party.
U.S. prosecutors allege that those were false statements. According to the complaint, an internet search conducted by the FBI revealed an April 2019 article about a health care forum hosted in Xi’an, China, where Tang had been invited to speak. The article included a headshot of Tang
wearing a military uniform that bore the insignia of the Civilian Cadres of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. Two other articles from 2019 list Tang’s employer as the PLA’s Air Force Military Medical University (AFMMU).
SEE FRAUD, PAGE A7
TANG In uniform
In brightest day or darkest night It’s official;
schools will begin year at a distance
Commissioners call for transparency BY ANNE TERNUS-BELLAMY Enterprise staff writer Fifteen current and former city commission members and a former mayor, galvanized by the City Council’s approval in March of a controversial lease option agreement with a commercial solar company, have issued a plan they say is needed to improve city decisionmaking. An open letter released by the group this week said informed and transparent decision making “is an essential pillar of good local governance” but that in Davis, that pillar is eroding. “Recent years have seen multiple alarming instances of secretive action, shortsighted planning, and disconnect between community and leadership priorities,” said the letter signed by former Mayor Mike Corbett and current city commissioners Larry Guenther, Dillan Horton, Lorenzo Kristov, Elizabeth Lasensky, Richard McCann, Roberta Millstein, Jeff Mischkinsky, Alan Pryor, Greg Rowe,
BY JEFF HUDSON Enterprise staff writer
treatment facility on County Road 28H. BrightNight had approached the city about leasing the land for a commercial solar farm and
During a lengthy special meeting on Thursday, July 23, the Davis school board voted to begin the 2020-21 school year with students studying online under distancelearning instruction due to health concerns stemming from the coronavirus. Laura Juanitas, associate superintendent with the Davis school district, told the trustees that there has been a spike in the number of cases of coronavirus in Yolo County after the Fourth of July weekend. John Bowes, Davis superintendent, agreed that the number of COVID-19 cases locally had shown a big uptick during the past two weeks. And Dr. Mary Ann Limbos, acting public health officer with Yolo County, added that the coronavirus vaccine currently being developed by
SEE TRANSPARENCY, PAGE A4
SEE SCHOOLS, PAGE A4
OWEN YANCHER/ENTERPRISE PHOTO
In March, the City Council approved a lease option for a commercial solar farm near the city’s wastewater treatment facility. Hannah Safford, Johannes Troost, Erik Vink, Colin Walsh and Matt Williams, as well as former commissioner Crilly Butler. All signed as individuals but serve or have served on 11
different city commissions, including several whose members were particularly critical of the solar lease agreement under which BrightNight obtained a lease option for 235 acres of land near the city’s wastewater
Council delays decision on mall plan Woman who killed ex in ’98 gets parole BY ANNE TERNUS-BELLAMY Enterprise staff writer After hearing from around 100 members of the public over the course of nearly three hours on Tuesday, the Davis City Council voted after midnight to continue to Aug. 18 the discussion — and a vote — on the University Mall redevelopment project. It’s not the first time the sheer volume of public comment during the Zoom era has required a major vote to be delayed. With members of the public able to leave their comments via voice mail even
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before the meeting began, the council entered Tuesday night’s public hearing on the project knowing they had at least 97 voice mails to listen to, prompting Mayor Gloria Partida to suggest to her colleagues that their deliberation and vote following the public hearing be delayed to a later date in order to ensure other items still on the agenda after the University Mall item could be heard. Well after midnight, after listening to every one of those comments plus a
INDEX
Arts . . . . . . . . . .B1 Forum . . . . . . . .B4 Sports . . . . . . .B8 Classifieds . . . . A5 Obituary . . . . . . A4 The Wary I . . . . A2 Comics . . . . . . .B7 Pets . . . . . . . . . A7 Weather . . . . . .B5
SEE COUNCIL, PAGE A7
WEATHER
BY LAUREN KEENE Enterprise staff writer A woman convicted in 2001 of shooting her exboyfriend in Washington and leaving him to die in a Davis motel room has been granted early parole under a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation order that seeks to reduce prison populations ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic.
While Terebea Jean Williams’ pending release has dismayed the victim’s family and Yolo County prosecutors who tried her case, her defenders say her exceptional conduct in prison over the past two decades warrants her freedom. Williams, now 44, was found guilty of first-degree murder, carjacking and kidnapping in connection
with the February 1998 homicide, discovered when a housekeeper at the Motel 6 on Chiles Road found Kevin “John” Ruska Jr. tied to a chair, lifeless from a gunshot wound to the abdomen. Ruska suffered the wound a day earlier and 750 miles away in Tacoma, Wash., where authorities
SEE PAROLE, PAGE A7
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